The Gaslighting of Patients

This was originally sent to the people on the Floxie Hope Email List. If you would like posts like this sent to you, please sign up for the list HERE. Thank you!

Gaslighting: A form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or members of a group, hoping to make targets question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target’s belief.

Very few things make me angrier than the gaslighting of patients who are suffering from adverse reactions to fluoroquinolones. Unfortunately, I hear of it often, and, every time, it makes my blood boil.

Adverse drug reactions are real. Considering how popular the mantra of, “all drugs have side-effects” is, you’d think that adverse reactions would be well recognized. They’re not though, and often patients who experience side-effects face denial, disbelief, derision, and even hostility from medical professionals.

Patients are foo often told that they are wrong, or that they must be crazy, or that what they’re experiencing is impossible, when they ask their doctors about the connections between their symptoms and the fluoroquinolone antibiotic (Cipro/ciprofloxacin, Levaquin/levofloxacin, Avelox/moxifloxacin, or Floxin/ofloxacin) that they took–even though, in many cases, the effects that the patient is experiencing are listed on the fluoroquinolone warning label.

The gaslighting of patients who experience adverse reactions to prescription drugs is absurd, it is wrong, and it needs to stop.

Of course, there are wonderful, understanding, empathetic doctors (and other medical professionals) who recognize that adverse reactions to pharmaceuticals are real. Those people are appreciated! When I hear of a doctor recognizing fluoroquinolone adverse reactions it warms my heart, because not only do I know that we are making progress, I know that a sick/hurt person is getting the healing recognition that he or she needs.